This is a guide which will tell which talents are the best to choose while leveling, also what rotation you should do, what gear boosts you should be focusing on and some general tips.

2. What's the best leveling spec?

The best leveling spec for the warlock is Affliction. This is because of it's the most mana efficient tree there is, and focuses on your DoTs. Demonology becomes the best 50+, and I've shown that in this guide.

3. The spec:

10 - 14:
Improved Corruption - 5/5

15 - 16:
Improved Life Tap - 2/2

17 - 18:
Soul Siphon - 2/2

19 - 20:
Improved Drain Soul - 2/2

21 - 23:
Fel Concentration - 3/3

24:
Improved Curse of Agony - 1/2

25 - 27:
Suppression - 3/3

28 - 29:
Nightfall - 2/2

30:
Siphon Life - 1/1

31:
Improved Curse of Agony - 2/2

32 - 34:
Empowered Corruption - 3/3

35 - 39:
Shadow Mastery - 5/5

40:
Dark Pact - 1/1

41 - 45:
Contagion - 5/5

46 - 47:
Improved Howl of Terror - 2/2

48 - 49:
Malediction - 2/3

At level 50, Respec to Demonology, using the following build.

Demonic Embrace - 5/5

Improved Health Funnel - 2/2

Demonic Brutality - 3/3

Fel Vitality - 3/3

Soul Link - 1/1

Fel Domination - 1/1

Demonic Aegis - 3/3

Unholy Power - 5/5

Master Summoner - 2/2

Master Demonologist - 5/5

Demonic Empowerment - 1/1

Demonic Resilience - 3/3

Demonic Knowledge - 3/3

Demonic Tactics - 1/5

Fel Synergy - 2/2

Summon Felguard - 1/1

At this point, your Felguard becomes your new pet through level 80!

51 - 52:
Improved Healthstone - 2/2

53 - 54:
Master Conjuror - 2/2

55 - 58:
Demonic Tactics - 5/5 (Should already have 1 point in this)

59:
Suppression - 1/3

60 - 64:
Improved Shadow Bolt - 5/5

65 - 69:
Bane - 5/5

70 - 72:
Cataclysm - 3/3

73 - 77:
Ruin - 5/5

78 - 79:
Destructive Reach - 2/2

80:
Devastation - 1/1

4. Abilities and Rotations

Always take the weapon with the best stats

1 - 9:

- Keep Demon Skin up.
- Get your Imp no later than level 4.
- Until you get Immolate and Corruption, spam Shadow Bolt.

Rotation: Immolate, Send in Imp while casting Corruption, Shadow Bolt or Wand to death. At level 8, Start rotation with Curse of Agony.

- Get your free mount!
- Continue using Any pet you like.
- Drain Life, Life Tap when needed.
- If you feel Imp has more DPS, go ahead and use him.

Rotation: Same as above.

40 - 49

- Use either Voidwalker or Felhunter, your own preference.
- Everything else, same as above.
- Use Shadow Bolt if Nightfall procs.
- For Voidwalkers, have them attack right away.
- For Felhunters, send them in after Immolate.

- At 62, switch to Fel Armor.
- From 50+, I'm not sure about a DEFINITE rotation, but you basically want to put all your dots on the mobs you are facing.
- I use a Felguard through these last 30 levels.

My rotation these last few levels(definitely not the best): Immolate, Curse of Agony, Corruption, Drain Life, Drain Soul.

You should probably by now understand what DoTs are and that they are your main damage dealing abilities. So any rotation you feel good with is fine.

NOTE - This build is for leveling, not raids/dungeons, consider respeccing!

I have not seen a good Demonology rotation yet, but keep your ears open.

5. Tips

Instances
- Make sure you start with around 10 Soul Shards.
- Give a Soul Stone to one of the healers.
- I could rant on with a ton of stuff, but I'm just going to say, read this.

Solo
- Carry 5 - 7 Soul Shards with you at all times. Delete excess stones.
- Don't waste a bag slot on a Soul Bag. You won't ever have enough SS's to worry about it.
- Just heal yourself with Drain Life when you need to heal.
- Bandages help as well.
- Like mentioned in the rotations, keep up Demon Skin/ Demon Armor/ Fel Armor
- Life Tap when low on mana.

Professions
- The best options are Skinning/Mining, they make lots of money, especially with the Death Knights wanting to go Blacksmithing.

6. Stats

In the following order: Spell Hit(Until capped) > Spell Power > Spell Haste > Spell Crit > Stamina > Intellect.
There are various opinions on the topic, but most Warlocks I know go generally by this.

7. Gear

Here I will eventually put some gear down you can get while leveling. But for now I don't have the time.

With Glyph of Corruption, when Shadow Trance procs, cast a Shadow Bolt

9. Addons

DoTimer - A handy mod for managing your DoTs and rotation.(thanks to kirby for this aswell)Necrosis - shard management(since with improved Drain Soul you'll want to get 14% FREE MANA from EVERY MOB YOU FIGHT, who can really pass that up, and who wants to delete all those stupid shards?) it also offers warnings about unfearable mobs, and audible warnings about your soulstone expiring, and nightfall procs, it also makes it a lot easier to keep a healthstone on hand, and as a affliction lock, you'll also likely want to keep a spellstone up now that Wrath made them halfway decent. Also, Necrosis has a DoTimer like feature for tracking how long your dots have left. In my eyes it totally mitigates any need for DoTimer as a lock. - Nicely put, deveyus!

Thanks to Everyone who added things while this was a wiki page, and thanks to Jame for WoW-Pro, of course!

Comments

Be pissy all you like, I don't mind, I'll simply stop being considerate and patient.

Its a poor guide because it does not give the reader all of the information required to know which way to go with this class. A dps class has three perfectly viable leveling specs not giving info on two of them while proclaiming to be a 'Warlock Guide' is misleading and a little shoddy. This is more like one third of a guide. I said earlier that it was a good guide for what it included and I stand by that but I think it is unfinished.

If you don't like mild criticism then don't post guide on a community site that prefers high quality over high turnover.

I wish people would spend more than a few hours on a guide before publishing it.

Even though I am not playing my warlock anymore, it was fun to play with a lot of combination. I have levelled my warlock to 70 with affliction and demonology spec. Both of them completely viable levelling specs. Didn't try destro but read too much about it.

Yes, you can level with destro also but it requires more patience but you can PvP with this spec also during levelling more easily then others.

According to warlock community, general believe is, level with affliction/demonology and after 80, start raiding with affliction. (Demonology is also good). After getting viable gear, start combination of destro builds.

Anyway, what I want to say is, please change your guide name to "Warlock Levelling Guide with Affliction Spec" or something else and there will be no problem.

Maybe in future somebody else will write demonology levelling specs and tips. (even me if I can find enough time )

We are here in good community and please try to give or take comment in more polite way.

It's a warlock leveling guide, talents and tips. All it needs to do is provide one good leveling spec.

I'm personally sharing the opinion that Affliction up to 50 and then respec to Demonology is the way to go for leveling a lock.

Yes, there are other viable ways, but there's no need to overload this guide with 3 different specs, if one works great. It just confuses people if you tell them "hey all these 3 specs are great, pick whichever you want".

So it's fine as it is. However, if someone wants to make a warlock leveling guide - talents and tips for other talent specs, then that's great. People can choose whichever guide they like, and the ratings will determine which is the best in the long run.

Hi, i have just this piece for the second time, and all in guess it is very usefull.
As a "old" Warlock myself, i do however have some comments here and there.

As stats you say spell hit. Actually, i disagree.
Spell hit till capped IS important for DPS on higher level bosses etcetera. But for similar or just 1 level hgher, it has almost no use. Spell hit only gets important when you raid. Wich is end content. For leveling, spell power -> stam -> spirit -> hit -> int.

Also, you say affliction is the best leveling bet AND you advocate the use of the fellhunter. I tent to disagree here to. I found for leveling, demonologie was waaay better. ( i have been swapping regulary ) and as a demo lock, i allways used the void, till the point i got my fellguard.
In all my leveling as a demo lock, i ate / drank 3 times or so. Allways found myself selling full stacks of food and drink after i leveled to much to have them give me enough.
As an affliction lock i was wayy more likely to go out of mana and need to drink untill after level 45. Also, as a demo lock, forget the repair bills, you never get hit enough to warrant repairing, all gear will be replaced before they go broke / yellow.

Demonology makes you almost unkillable in PVE for leveling, and also able to kill almost every elite group target you need. Even better then with affliction. Affliction is awesome for grinding and targeting more then 1 regular mob.
As an affliction lock, you can easy stay alive with kiting and running, or even draintanking ( take their health as needed to stay alive while they die of DoTs.

Desto is only good for high level raiders with massive +crit and +hit.

Sometimes when speccing you skip certain talents in favour of more useful ones, but then go back some of the skipped talents in later levels because they now become more useful to you. Another reason could be that there are better talents available, then in order to unlock the next tier of talents, you neede to put your points in some not-so-important talents to use as 'filler-points. These fulfill the rtequirents to be able to unlock later tiers, yet we didn't spec into them at the time because they didn't provide us with as much functionality as others.

Imp. CoA is available to use for your first talent point should you wish, however it is skipped in this guide at that point so just go back to it and put your point in

Another prime example of this scenario would the the Warrior talent Armored to the Teeth. This talent is available to use from the first point, but there are loads of talents that provide lot more use at this stage. As this talent gets better as you gear up and level, then you spec it (around 60+ is ok, depending on personal preference). Otherwise it is a waste of 3 points until that point.